The Funniest, Dirtiest, Most Disgusting Port-a-Potty Stories Ever

Somehow humanity managed to build structures for 10,000 years before somebody finally invented the port-a-potty. (George Harding received a patent for a plastic portable restroom in the 1960s.)

Today, the port-a-potty—200 pounds of awful, stinking, retchingly-effective convenience—is a modern-day staple of construction sites, monster music festivals, and just about any other place where there’s some level ground and the need for people to take a dump without the trouble of, you know, plumbing.

There’s a price for such convenience, and it’s paid most often by our nose (the most-used deodorant in port-a-potties is formaldehyde—yes, embalming fluid—try to forget that next time you pee into the shadowy hole) and our dignity.

But there is something about the port-a-potty, about being so close to our own (and others’) filth, that makes it rich ground for stories. Funny stories, gross stories. Stories about how the things, and the lives, we try to keep clean have an ability, an aptitude really, for slipping from our hands and landing at the bottom of a tank filled with sopping paper, untold amounts of reeking crap, and the occasional engagement ring.

What follows are six of the funniest, most disgusting, and horrifyingly real stories we could find. So hold your nose and read on. The guys with the hoses don’t come for another hour.

* * *

"THAT'S NOT SOAP!"

When my daughter was 7, her soccer team participated in a 24-hour tournament for charity. If you’ve spent any time around youth soccer, you know one thing: field complexes and indoor plumbing don’t mix. I don’t know why, but with an older daughter in the sport too, I’d long ago accepted port-a-potties as the necessary evil they are.

Taylor had yet to drink that Kool-Aid. She wasn’t even a fan of toilets with running water. In first grade, we had to bribe her to pee in the morning, before heading off to school. Then at night she’d get indignant: “But I went this morning!”

Of course I made her go before we left the house. Good thing too. When she noticed the port-a-potties dotting the field complex, she made it clear: Not happening. And I figured fine. There was a Starbucks a mile away. When the time came, I’d drive her over and grab a mocha while I was at it. Two birds, one flush.

By late afternoon, it was time. I figured I should at least give her a hard time. Maybe I was extra persuasive that day. Maybe watching her teammates—and hundreds of other kids—use the port-a-potties all day lowered her inhibitions. Or maybe she had to go really bad. Either way, she agreed to use one—if I went with her.

I did. I even opened the door and gave her a quick tour, before waiting outside. A minute later, she exited. “Was that so bad?”

“No, just a little smelly,” she said. Breakthrough!

But then I noticed she was rubbing her hands together. “Wait, what’s that?”

“Soap,” she said.

“What soap?”

“The pink stuff.”

I raced back to the unit and opened the door. There was no soap. There was no hand sanitizer. She was washing her hands with the urinal cake.

—Bill Phillips

***

"SHE KIND OF DESERVED IT"

It happened at Coachella in 2011. I was standing in line at the port-a-potty corral and this girl, who was obviously ripped on Molly, stumbled her way up to the front, talking obnoxiously loud.

The guy in front of me yelled at her, something about not cutting in line. She turned and creepily stared into his soul for what felt like several minutes. And then she said "Your aura is putrid." I think she meant it as an insult, but it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever heard.

One of the stalls finally opened up, and she walked straight towards it with this insistent fury, ignoring all the insults being thrown at her from the crowd. She'd barely closed the door when we heard a loud "fuck" coming from her port-a-potty. And then, 15 seconds later, an awful, almost indescribable sound. It was a mix between a splash and a ploop, like something getting sucked into the vat of excrement.

I can only guess what went on in that port-a-potty, but I have a theory. I think she dropped her cellphone into the hole, and then got on her hands and knees and tried to fish it out. When she couldn't grab it, she lifted her knees and got up on her tippy-toes and reached in as far as she could.

Remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Elsa jumps into the chasm to try and get the Holy Grail, and Jones is hanging on to her and she's still grabbing for the Grail, and then she falls into the abyss? I'm pretty sure that's what it was like.

She went too far in, and landed in the crap crevasse.

We didn't hear anything for a second, and then the door slowly creaked opened. She emerged like some sort of horrible stink monster. Her left arm and the left side of her head were completely covered in a bluish brown goo, a mix of someone's digested Indian food and ... God, I don't even want to speculate. She looked like the Toxic Avenger, but with boobs.

The smell was atrocious, and the crowd backed up 20 feet almost instantly. I even saw one girl start to wretch. The shit-stained girl was screaming, and she ran off into the night. I never saw her again, but the thought and smell of her still lingers.

—Harry Dinwiddie

"I LOVE MY JOB"

From 2006 to 2011, I wrote a humor column for a Las Vegas newspaper, in which I sampled the most unusual jobs around the Strip. They weren't just the dirty ones; I also washed the windows at the top of the Stratosphere, performed magic in Nathan Burton's show, and danced as a cross-dressed showgirl in "Folies Bregere."

But there is one job whose smell still won't come out of my nosehairs: sinking the head of a vacuum hose into the squishy, blue-brown abyss at the bottom of 50 Hampel Global Portable Restrooms.

If you think cleaning toilets qualifies you to know how it feels to be a port-a-potty cleaner, imagine toilets that are used 100 times each without a single flush, by construction workers who are obviously not grocery shopping at Whole Foods. Then imagine the contents fermenting outdoors in 110-degree heat for seven days.

More than -20 psi of air pressure slurped the chunky liquid up into the tank of our truck. But not without regular splashes depositing themselves on my bare forearms, thus spoiling dinner for a month and possibly violating Amnesty International's basic human-rights protocols. (And WTF was a chicken beak doing in there?)

Traveling with kids presents challenges, particularly in arranging to void their little poopers. I’ll never forget the tiled holes we’ve squatted over, the pub potties we’ve begged our way into, or particularly the day we encountered the self-cleaning port-a-potty of Montparnasse, in Paris, France.

This toilet was encased in a glittering metal oval with a sliding door, a slick pod from an alien world. My 10-year-old was instantly captivated. From a nearby cafe, we had watched as people went in and out without episode, so when he begged to try it, I gave him a Euro and told him to go. This potty looked capable of not just relieving his bowels but also giving him a fluoride treatment, plucking his eyebrows, and ironing his socks.

He went in, shut the door, and immediately the sign clicked over to bright red, indicating in symbols and French that the toilet was now in CLEANING MODE.

“Oh, no no,” I told the toilet, hammering on the wall. “Open up. Benny, open the door!”

Now there were odd sounds emerging. Water sounds. Thumping. I imagined sponges on hydraulic arms, turning him upside down and disinfecting his ears. Washes of bleach spraying from pipes in the ceiling. Whirring brushes pushing him to and fro. Adrenalin junkies, leave your surfboards, and come to Paris, where a mechanical toilet will robotically clean your child as you stand on the cobblestone paralyzed with fear.

“The toilet ate Benny,” rejoiced the 6-year-old.

I considered using a baguette as a crowbar, to force the door ajar.

At last the door opened and he emerged. “That was awesome,” he said, his head not covered in lye, his t-shirt unbleached, his smile majestic. “Did you see? I saw it was about to do cleaning mode, so I just had to go in.”

—Lydia Netzer

* * *

"THE WRONG HOLE"

Originally, I didn’t think Oktoberfest was a great theme for my nephew’s bar mitzvah. It’s not that he was into drinking beer to celebrate his becoming a man, but he was going through a “German” phase, as I assume all kids do. My sister and brother-in-law didn’t seem to mind and they found a great outdoor beer garden that could accommodate the rousing ‘Hava Nagila’ dancing.

They needed to provide outdoor portable bathrooms for the guests. True to form, along with getting ex-NY Knick Walt Frazier to sign autographs, they did not skimp on the quality of outdoor toilets choosing the upscale “Throne Away From Home” brand.

Of course I had to check it out. The typical one was a double-wide decorated with flowers, a scented candle, and a framed picture of my nephew Jarrett wearing lederhosen. This was the Mercedes of dumping grounds.

I had just started my business when I heard voices in an adjacent throne. A man’s and woman’s voices. Drunk. Holy shit, I was going to get to hear some sex. I tried to stay very quiet. Then it got weird.

"No, not in that hole," the woman’s voice said.

"Com’n let’s do it” the guy said.

"No, you are not fucking me in the ass here, stop it."

“Why not?”

“You’re just not.”

The negotiations on the butt play went on a few more rounds and I’m pretty sure the guy lost. Then I heard some sucking sounds and the guy making some sounds of his own. I realized this might be someone I know. Just to be sure, I ran through a mental list of my sister’s friends and relatives who probably didn’t like anal.

You can only hear so much sex that’s not yours, so I finished up and got out of there. As I opened the door, I saw a crowd of 13-year-old boys huddled around the throne next door. I gave them the thumbs-up sign and went back to see what was on “Der Dessert Cart.”

—Gary Rudoren

* * *

"JOURNEY INTO (STINKY) HELL"

In the aftermath of Katrina, I found myself doing relief roofing work in Gulf Port, Mississippi. I climbed ladders, hauled material and laid shingles. I slept in a plastic relief hut called a pod.

I ate a lot of fast food and whatever gas stations had to offer. I ate some of a pecan pie that we purchased out of the trunk of someone’s car. Don’t judge me.

If adrenaline rush was your bag, working on the storm damaged roof of a 1920’s row house brought plenty of thrills and chills. Slipping on asphalt shingles thirty feet up at the apex of a sharply angled gable got your heart pumping. There was always the threat of stepping on a previously undiscovered weak spot where the substrate had rotted through.

Your partner was a hungover college student with poor trigger control and a pneumatic nail gun. I’ve felt the cool breeze of a framing hammer as it gently plummeted past my head from two stories above me. That was memorable.

And so were the stomach cramps. Perhaps trunk pie wasn’t a good idea after all.

If you spent any time in the area of operations post-Katrina you will remember the eerie silence. No bird song. No feral cats. No flushing toilets. In the end times, we will all poop like cavemen.

Unfortunately, digging a hole wasn’t an option, and there was no way I was going to be able to make it back to camp. Rumor had it that there was a comfort station about a half-mile down the road. All I had to do was make it through the post-apocalyptic landscape, to the abandoned elementary school.

And JUST like that, I was in my very own zombie movie.

The hard part wasn’t getting past the two dudes yelling and shoving each other in the middle of the street. Even when one went to his truck and took out a baseball bat, I wasn’t distracted. This wasn’t my fight. My battle this day was gastrointestinal. I gave the combatants as wide a berth as possible.

The hard part wasn’t when I ran into a sizeable, matted, and traumatized dog. I was less concerned about being mauled to death by a mutant mixed breed terrier than I was at the rumblings in my core. And truth be told, that dog was way more scared than I was. Probably because I had been walking the entire way stiff-legged and clenching. I was dirty, sweaty, grimacing, and grunting with effort to control my bowels.

If this was a zombie movie, I was the zombie.

I had no time to reflect on this plot twist. I was in sight of the school. There, behind a construction fence, in all it’s blue, prefabricated, plastic glory; a symbol of man’s progress and God’s mercy. I was coming in hot, already dropping my pants as I opened the door.

As I stepped in, I was greeted by a wave of stink that slapped me hard enough to bring tears to my eyes and cause an involuntary gag reflex. I told myself not to look. I should not have looked. The contents of the whatever you call the collection in one of those things was nightmare fuel. But the thing itself was, amazingly enough, relatively clean. It was intended for use in an emergency and It served it’s purpose. I can’t complain.

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